2006
2006 was the busiest ever year for the Symbian, S60 and UIQ world. 2006 marked the arrival of the first Symbian OS 9 devices. Despite some initial bumps the new OS roll out (and related software break) proceeded smoothly.In 2006 Symbian broke through the 100 million devices shipped barrier, S60 made advances with operators and devices, UIQ 3 and S60 3rd Edition software platforms made their debut and Sony Ericsson acquired UIQ Technologies. There was a lot more in between though - read on for an abridged summary of the happenings in 2006.
January
Some of the last of the N-Gage Classic games, Mile High Pinball and High Seize, receive positive reviews from Ewan. On January 9th the first episode in Steve's Smartphones Show is premiered. The news broke that Google had acquired ReqWireless, developer of a popular proxy browser (similar to Opera Mini), the sign of things to come. A few days later Google unveiled the mobile version of its personalised home page service. At CES Yahoo announced its Go! service which bought multiple Yahoo services to mobiles (and other devices). Towards the end of the month, Quickoffice announced it had received $11.5 million in funding and was working on the next version of its award winning office suite. Nokia Research unveiled the port of Apache for S60, allowing you to run a web server on your smartphone. Forum Nokia released the first full version of the S60 3rd Edition C++ SDK and Navicore announced the launch of their 2006 Personal Navigator product. Finally, to round out the month the S60 Multimedia Blog was unveiled on S60.com and Python for S60 became an open source project on SourceForge.
February
The Nokia 9300i, the last of the venerable Series 80 communicator range, begins shipping. The next communicator, expected to be announced in early 2007 will run S60. On the 6th, Sony Ericsson announced the M600i, its fifth UIQ phone and the second to use UIQ 3. With a innovative full QWERTY keyboard, it moved away from the 'one device does it all' ethos of the P series and instead addressed the Enterprise market segment. The following day, the the Support section appeared on AAS for the first time, aimed at answering frequently asked questions. February is usually a busy month thank to 3GSM and 2007 was no exception, with a multitude of announcements from Barcelona. Symbian announced it was reducing its license fees, with the new prices started at $2.50 and that its licensees had shipped 34 million Symbian OS powered phones in 2005. Also announced was the mobile email validation program, aimed at promoting best practice for push email services, and a new Symbian Press Book - How Smartphones Work. Symbian, in conjunction with Nokia and Freescale, announced a new reference design that was aimed at cutting device development cost (by up to 50%) and encouraging new manufacturers into the Symbian world. A key announcement from Nokia and Vodafone was that S60 would be a preferred software platform for Vodafone's future device portfolio. Nokia announced it has completed the acquisition of Intellisync, an enterprise solutions company. Forum Nokia announced its first Forum Nokia Champions. Heralding the rise of DVB-H, Nokia and Sony Ericsson announced they would be working together on mobile TV standards. UIQ Technology announced a new Premium level for its Developer Program, while Sony Ericsson announced that they were stream-lining their developer program and showing off software from their key developer partners. Samsung announced the SGH Z600, a flip S60 phone, which has yet to make a major reappearance. The biggest splash of the event was the announcement of the Sony Ericsson W950, a Walkman branded music phone with 4GB of internal flash memory. 3GSM also saw a native Skype client running on a Nokia 6680 and Symbian's first ever event blog. After 3GSM, things were a little quieter, but we still saw the first release of Carbide.C++ Express, Yahoo releasing ZoneTag and Google revealing their mobile news service.
March
In the first week of March, Mobipocket Professional, the eBook reader, went free and MobiSystems released OfficeSuite for S60. Nokia released version 2.0 of its popular LifeBlog software and ROK TV was relaunched. Halfway through the month, Six Apart acquired Splash Blog, Symbian.com got a redesign and the Designed for S60 Devices program was launched. The Nokia 3250 became the first Symbian OS 9 and S60 3rd Edition device to begin shipping. At the GDC conference, Nokia announced that its next generation gaming platform would be arriving in 2007 and showed off some preliminary details. In the last week of the month, a number of new MOAP-based Symbian OS devices were announced in Japan, T-Mobile announced the UK's first realistically priced flat rate data plan and we published our long term N70 review (the then current smartphone of choice) and followed it up with a review of the twist-tastic Nokia 3250.
April
At the beginning of the month, the first third party software for S60 3rd Edition (Handy Weather) was made available. At CTIA, emoze announced the launch of their free push email solution. Ewan reviewed the Nokia N91 music phone and Simon Judge released the first freeware for Symbian OS 9. Nokia Research released the open source S60 Internet Radio for streaming audio over the air from the internet via Shoutcast. We published our report from CTIA, rounding up news and trends from the US Mobile trade show. Nokia opened its UK online shop and we discovered that all the N-Gages were to be found on the TGV. At the Open Studio Event in Berlin, Nokia announced three new Nseries devices - the N72, N73 and N93. At this event, Nokia also announced the Nseries Studio and the integration of Flickr into the Nseries range of phones.
May
At the start of May, the Nokia E61 began shipping and in due course AAS reviewed it. Opera released version 2.0 of its Opera Mini product and shipped the first version of its full blown browser for S60 3rd Edition. Nokia announced the Nokia 5500, a sports focussed mid range smartphone with a built in accelerometer. At E3, Nokia showed off the first demos of the next generation gaming titles. Half way through the month, Nokia released Exchange ActiveSync for Eseries devices, bringing Exchange push email to S60. NTT DoCoMo added another 5 Symbian OS phones. At the S60 Summit in Nice, Nokia announced the newest addition to the Eseries line up - the svelte E50 (preview) and that the Nokia E70 was now shipping. Sony Ericsson announced a M600 variant, the M608c for the Chinese market. The first publicly available third party UIQ 3 software was made available. ViewRanger, a GPS application with a difference was launched and Steve reviewed it. WorldMate became the first native Symbian application to become free purely because of an ad supported version. Nokia made the source code for the S60 Browser publicly available. The official S60 podcast was launched and an early guest was AAS' Rafe. In the last days of May, the Blackberry Connect Client was made available for the Nokia E61.
June
The Nokia N72 started shipping and soon became a hot seller in emerging markets. The venerable Handy Safe was updated to version 5, it remains one of the best selling Symbian applications of all time. All About Symbian hosted the Carnival of the Mobilists. Nokia released their Podcasting client application. DataViz released RoadSync for Symbian 9 devices, enabling Exchange ActiveSync for all. Nokia's Widsets application, a widget application, was quietly soft-launched. Towards the middle of the month, the first UIQ 3 device, the Sony Ericsson M600, started shipping. Symbian formally announced their Symbian Academy program, aimed at encouraging the teaching of Symbian in Universities. GPS navigation solutions Route 66 and Wayfinder made their debut on S60 3rd Edition. At the end of the month, the W3C unveiled their Mobile Web Best Practices document, aimed at improving standards on mobile web sites.
July
At the beginning of July, we reviewed the just released Nokia N80. Nokia started making N-Gage games available for download via an online shop, an early example was Mile High Pinball priced at €9.99. NTT DoCoMo announced some business-focussed Symbian MOAP phones. Nokia announced it had sold 1 million 3250's in the first 3 months of the product's availability. Symbian formally announced the 9.3 version of their OS, adding performance and technology improvements and that 10 million Symbian OS phones had shipped in Japan. Steve reviewed the lastest version of the Wayfinder GPS navigation software and service and followed it up with a review of the gull-wing Nokia E70. Towards the end of the month, the Nokia N93, N73 and Nokia 5500 Sport started shipping, and we took our first look at the Nokia N93. At the close of the month, DataViz released a version of their office suite, Documents to Go, for UIQ 3.
August
At the start of the month, Rafe and Steve combined to review the Nokia N93 in two parts. The long awaited Sony Ericsson P990 started shipping in small numbers, but the early firmware was plagued by software problems. Nokia introduced the Nokia N93 Golf Edition. Nokia acquired Loudeye, a music service and distribution company. Nokia announced an over the internet service to update the firmware (software update) of selected phones (later expanded to cover many phones). Rafe reviewed the Sony Ericsson M600i. In its Q2 figures, Symbian stated that 92% of the world's 3G phones shipped in Q2 ran Symbian OS. The first hints of the Nokia E62 leaked out. Nokia announced the Nokia N80 Internet Edition and that it had acquired gate5, a mapping and navigation company.
September
Steve welcomed September by reviewing the Nokia N73, the new best of breed smartphone all rounder. A preview version of Ruby for Symbian, a programming language, was released. Ewan published his long term N91 review. Nokia and Cingular formally announced the E62, with a starting price point of $150. OggPlay became available for S60 3rd Edition devices. New AAS contributor krisse reviewed the Nokia 5500 smartphone. A US variant of the E70 became officially available. Microsoft's Live search was added to Nokia's Mobile Search. At an Open Studio event in New York, Nokia announced the latest of their convergence titans, the GPS enabled Nokia N95. Nokia also announced the N75, N70 Music Edition, N73 Music Edition, Nokia 3250 Music Edition and N91 8GB Edition.
October
October opened with Sony Ericsson announcing a Chinese variant of the W950 - the W958c. Rafe reviewed Sony Ericsson's flagship smartphone, the P990i. S60 and Orange announced that S60 would be a preferred software platform for Orange Signature devices. The last of the N-Gage classic games, Payload, was made available via the N-Gage online shop. Quickoffice announced version 3.1 of their office suite, which included the innovative Quickmanager. Symbian provided some pre-smartphone show podcasts. Nokia announced the Nokia 5500 Music Edition. The Symbian Smartphone Show provided the usual range of announcements and product launches. UIQ announced the foundation of its Developer Advisory Board (DAB). Symbian Developer Network relaunched its web site, new features included a wiki and a forum for greater interactivity. NTT DoCoMo announced the launch of another 7 Symbian MOAP phones. Nokia announced its S60 3rd Edition Challenge competition winners. Nokia formally announced the launch of the Carbide.ui product for creating themes for Nokia phones. Cingular and Symbian teamed up to help developers. All About Symbian had its traditional pre-show pub meet. Sling Media demoed its Sling Player on UIQ and S60 for the first time. Samsung launched its SGH i520 S60 smartphone, while LG showed off its first S60 phone - the LG JoY. Ewan reviewed both the show keynote and the giveaway Smartphone Smart Cards. Towards the end of the month Nokia announced the N93 Mission Impossible III Edition. Steve scared everyone with his N93 poetry, before returning to normal in his review of TomTom 6 for S60 3rd Edition. Krisse meanwhile was summarising everything we knew about the N-Gage Next Generation and reviewing the options for eBooks on S60 3rd Edition.
November
Ewan reflected on the Smartphone Show and concluded that Symbian are a very British company in their modus operandi. Nokia's Podcasting application came out of Beta. Steve explored the depths of Platform Security on Symbian OS. Sony Ericsson acquired UIQ Technology and Rafe explained the story behind it. Steve took a closer look at N93 MI:3 Edition and the N93 Golf Edition. Sun open sourced Java ME. Krisse turned back the clock and looked at interactive text gaming. Symbian announced that 100 million Symbian OS devices had been shipped since the company's inception. The Media section made its debut on All About Symbian together with the first podcasts and videocasts. Steve video reviewed the M600. Krisse listened to radio around the world using S60 Internet Radio. Ewan published his podcast interview with Symbian's CEO. At Nokia World, its annual conference, Nokia launched the Nokia 6290, a mid range flip form factor S60 smartphone.
December
Ewan talked to Marcus Ahonen about the new release of Carbide. Rafe previewed the Nokia 6290 Smartphone. The S60 Mobile Security Blog joined the S60.com blogs collective. Steve reviewed the Nokia E60. The Nokia Music Recommenders service launched. Steve explained how to get the best out of Nseries camera phones. Ewan took a first look at the Sony Ericsson W950 and had a shoot out between Calendar replacement applications. Steve video reviewed the Nokia 5500, declaring it the Swiss Army Knife of smartphones and thus perfect for camping trips!
2007
2006 was a busy year, but we're expecting 2007 to be even busier. More devices, more software and more services. All About Symbian aims to remain your essential companion to the Symbian, S60 and UIQ world. We are always happy to hear from our readers, so please let us know if you have any feedback - good or bad.
Rafe Blandford, 5 January 2007